Waiting for our Parts

Waiting for our Parts

Around mid-August, MAN told us there had been a cock up in Germany and our order was delayed until early September. This was unfortunate and so we used our extra time to explore northern Argentina before heading back into Chile to collect our parts.

From Salta we headed to San Salvador de Jujuy on the very narrow and twisty Route 9 which wound along the side of green, forested hills. It was a very pleasant drive, technically illegal for trucks, but luckily we did not come across anything large coming the other way. We camped in a municipal campsite and Dave made a (very tasty!) batch of chutney.

We stayed in JuJuy for a couple of rather overcast days to explore (it looked much better on our return a week later in the sunshine!) before heading up (in altitude) to Humahuaca – a lovely town and the gateway to the famous 14 coloured rocks in the mountains above the town.

Along the way we explored Purmamarca (a tourist town surrounded by more coloured rocks), Maimara (also with coloured rocks), MEC Museo En Los Cerros (a small photography exhibition with works by local artists, nicely located amongst coloured rocks) and Tilcara (another nice tourist town not far from some coloured rocks). We celebrated Francine’s birthday with a meal at Casa Mocha (a restaurant in the middle of nowhere), hiked in the Quebrada de Las Señoritas and stopped for a photo at the monument for the Tropic of Capricorn.

We again met Rolf and Christina at Humahuaca and we spent a nice day exploring the town and then driving up to the Cerro Hornocal – coloured rocks.

At this time we were told our parts would not be available for another week and so we decided to visit the Calilegua National Park for a change of scenery (from barren landscapes to rainforest). We camped in the park for three days and hiked its senderos.

And then we retraced our steps back to Jujuy, and drove the stunning pass from Purmamarca over to Salina Grandes before retaking the Jama Pass over to San Pedro de Atacama in Chile. Here we met a bunch of other overlanders and we arranged to drive the Laguna Route in Bolivia with a young family from Canada/Spain.

From there we headed to Calama, collected our parts and visited MAN to fit them. We returned to San Pedro de Atacama and climbed 2,000m to the Bolivian border (4,500m). Then it was ‘Bolivia: here we come!’